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Of the current squad, only Dave Brammer and Anthony Tonkin cost over £50,000 and recent signings in the shape of Justin Cochrane, Adie Moses and Eamonn Zayed have been carefully plundered from the basement leagues for basement prices.
Over the late 1990s and early 2000s, Crewe were able to spend upwards of £500,000 on the likes of Rodney Jack, Dave Walton and Dave Brammer, but with the absence of promised ITV Digital money, Dario has faced up to the fact that those days have all but gone.
The manager said: "We've always looked at every market. Obviously, we like to see kids coming through and that's our bread and butter. That's always been supplemented by free transfers or loan purchases and then, of course, in recent times we've tried to invest in staying in the First Division with, for us, three particularly big-money signings."
"The three have not worked as well as we would have liked but they've worked well enough to have kept us in the First Division for six years. All those players made a good contribution - in Brams' case, he made a great contribution to getting us back up - so you could say that's money well spent - but that's a market we won't be able to go into, because clubs like us no longer have that money so we do still look in the non-league."
The arrival of highly rated Irishman Zayed until summer allows Gradi to experiment with the half-Tunisian's obvious height and physical presence, possibly giving the reds another angle of attack from that of Dean Ashton and Steve Jones. With Allan Smart's move not working out, the club needed to find some fresh back up for the front two, because goals are not particularly flowing at the moment.
"It's obviously an advantage to have some big guys, unless you can play fantastic football and you never have to hit a high ball forward", he continued.
"(But) we can't play like that as we can't pass like Arsenal - although we try to pass the ball as much as we can - so that big guy up front is important. If Eamon can head the crosses then he'll be worth millions of pounds very quickly because there aren't many big guys that can. If he can flick it on, that will be an advantage."